Charlie Chaplin vs. America

Starred review from August 28, 2023
Biographer Eyman (20th Century Fox) presents a riveting account of the events that led the U.S. government in 1952 to banish Charlie Chaplin, a Brit by birth who had lived in America for decades after first arriving as a teenager. According to Eyman, Chaplin earned detractors in his adopted country as his films became more overtly political, with some complaining that his 1940 anti-Nazi satire The Great Dictator was intended to undermine American neutrality in WWII. After Chaplin gave a series of speeches in 1942 advocating for the opening of a second European front to support Russia, the FBI “sailed into the Chaplin business full-time,” investigating him for alleged communist sympathies and amassing a 1,900-page file on him. The Bureau leaked dubious information about Chaplin’s sex life to his critics in the press, most notably gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who used the occasion of an “ugly, trumped-up paternity suit” to drive public opinion against the filmmaker. He fell into such disfavor that when he was denied reentry to the U.S. after leaving for the London premier of his film Limelight, he didn’t bother fighting the decision. Eyman gives the history a sense of urgency by highlighting the danger that government interference poses to artistic speech, and his account of how “Chaplin’s forced exile destroyed him as an artist” is affecting. Readers will be rapt.

Starred review from June 1, 2024

In this must-listen account, biographer Eyman (Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise) journeys through Charlie Chaplin's unconventional life and times, traversing the heights of the silent film era and the lows of the Red Scare movement in Hollywood. With a brisk yet companionable tone, narrator Phil Thron describes the 10-year period that led to the banishment of a controversial movie icon. Having never taken U.S. citizenship, Chaplin challenged ideas about capitalism and critiqued fascism in his films at a time when many Americans preferred taking an isolationist stance regarding world affairs. Media columnists could make or break one's career in the entertainment industry, and anticommunist sentiment was rampant. Chaplin battled disinformation for decades, and though he was never convicted of a crime, his career never recovered, and he remained unable to return to the U.S. until 1972. Eyman offers a rebuttal to Kenneth S. Lynn's 1997 Chaplin and His Times, inviting listeners to lend a sympathetic ear to Chaplin's fall from grace. VERDICT The Little Tramp's triumphs and shortcomings will captivate listeners who want to know what led to his professional exile from the U.S. during the Red Scare years.--Sharon Sherman

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